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Thursday, January 17, 2019

And then, then...

"Then" by definition is what comes after now. And I've already established that it is always "now," so you can really never reach "then." So why do we even have a word for it (then, not "it")?

 And yes, I am still listening to Alan Watts. I have to tell you, though, his speaking style is a bit annoying. He pauses a great deal while he speaks which makes me check my phone to see if I lost my signal. But "then" he finishes his sentence.

But I digress. Though I noticed that "then" is used a great deal to describe a sequence of past events. This butts heads with the notion that there is no past, either, just the now. So "then" can't cut break no matter what it describes.

In Mel Gibson's film, Braveheart, William Wallace asks the parents of a young woman he is interested in whether he can go for a horseback ride with her. The reply was "No the now." At the time, I thought it was just a Scottish thing. But "now" I think the scriptwriter may have been slipping in some philosophy. You be the judge:




I think this YouTube clip illustrates just how irritating being in the now all the time is.

But "then" I could be wrong.

Monday, January 07, 2019

Now, now...


So I continue to listen to Philosopher Alan Watts into the new year. And I realize that I have heard everything he has said about living in the now many, many times. But I doubt I have ever really "heard" it.

I wonder if my parents ever thought about their place in the universe and the questions of why we are here. My mother bought firmly into the myth of her religion and clutched to it right up until her death. And from what I witnessed of her death, her faith didn't offer much comfort in her final moments.

I never discussed anything philosophical with my father. He did seem focused on his here and now which ping ponged between discovering lost treasures in ghost towns and cheering on the Boise State Bronco football team. Though I imagine both fixations didn't really involve the now. He set his sights on a hidden treasure that perhaps he imagined would change his life of barely scrapping by financially. I can only guess as to why he was fixated on the Boise Broncos. He'd been a janitor at a dorm at Boise State that housed many football players. So my negative self imagined they became the sons he wished he had.